Unofficial news and tips about Google

February 26, 2008

Chat With Your Site's Visitors Using Google Talk

Google Talk's gadget was a nice addition, but you couldn't use it to chat with unknown people or with the visitors of the site, like in Meebo Me. Now you can do that using the new chatback badges. You only need to add some code to your site and anyone could click on the generated badge to chat with you.

"A Google Talk chatback badge allows others to chat with you even if they haven't signed up for Google Talk or a Google Account. You can put the badge in your blog or website, and people who visit those pages can chat with you. The badge will display your online status (whether you're available to chat or not) and, optionally, your status message."

If someone clicks on the badge, a special version of the Google Talk gadget will open and he will be able to chat with you.

The conversations are private and only one-to-one, so other visitors won't be able to read them. For some strange reason, they're not even added in Gmail's chat section. Unfortunately, being constantly interrupted by other people is not very pleasant, so you can disable the link from your badge by setting your status to "busy" or by signing out of Google Talk.

79 comments:

I have been trying to find out if it is possible to style the talk gadget to match your site. I know it's an iframe but there was some way of doing it for the regular chat box with a linked xml file. No luck so far. Anyone know if it possible?

I still don't understand why you would add that gadget to a site. If I want to chat with my contacts, I have other options.

Regarding the customizations, Google offers a way to link to a CSS file, but there's a problem: "the domain from which your custom CSS file is served must also be hosting a properly-configured crossdomain.xml file at the root level. This file allows the Google Talk Gadget to load data (your custom CSS file) from your domain."

I'm almost tempted to fire up Safari or IE to see if Google's accidentally done something that breaks in Firefox.

This is really a neat feature. Matches the Grand Central "Call Me" button or AIM's "Mimzi" Facebook app... the ability for people to connect with you without having any particular software, or even knowing your phone number or IM. (Though sounds like the Google one will display your name.)

Wow, this functionality is great - instant communication available to any visitor, but it still maintains anonymity. I have gone ahead and put this one my page, but haven't figured out if my crossdomain.xml is working in an attempt to style the bubble.

My basic css file is just trying to change the background of the bubble (class ".b" - thanks firebug), but no luck yet.

Joey: I wondered this and then decided it didn't matter, as they never see your identity, other than your nickname (which you can change).

The biggest downside I can see is that this doesn't send the messages straight to your IM of choice, but rather sends a message to your IM app telling you that someone has left a message and gives you a link to the gadget with the guest already waiting for you. So instead of just replying, they must wait for you to receive their question, click the link, wait for the page to open and reply. It's a bit round-about.

It's not round-about as long as you use gadget instead of Google Talk desktop client. I have strong feeling that Google deliberately keeps forgetting about desktop GT updates hoping that adding lots of features to flash version will disencourage us from using desktop one... I don't really like this all-in-browser way...

Well... I've spent almost half my sleep time just to shrink that enormous 200x60 bubble to fit in my site.After hours of trying to access the DOM of that iframe via javascript and jquery, trying to include the file by PHP's include() and even trying an XMLHTTPRequest to that external file, I found the solution to my problem. If you look at the code, at the end of the src attribute of the iframe there is something like this:

src="...3bos8c60l2b7&w=200&h=60"

if you change "w=200" for "w=###", the bubble will have a ### pixels width. The same goes for h=60 and the height.

I didn't know of the crossdomain.xml and CSS, I'll give it a try these days, but if you just want to shrink it, it's pretty easier this way ^_^

Nice functionality. But when I already logged-in in a client, why it is giving a link and upon clicking that, it is opening a new window. After that, if I minimize the window, it is not giving any notifications when a new message comes. Is it not possible to see all the messages by the site visitors in my client only?

Neil, You might want to play with http://www.hab.la it's a free alternative to google's chat back. And is really customizable, although admittedly no one has really pushed it's customizing features to the edge.

The Google chatback badge is kinda neat, but it definitely is behind the times in terms of functionality and easy-of-use. The series of pop-ups and windows you get when someone initiates a conversation from the web is annoying. Both Hab.la and Digsby offer plug-ins for your site that are much nicer.

I've been messing with this for a couple days. I think the fact that my librarians (which is how we'll use this as a reference service) have to click on so many links just to activate the chat will be a project killer.

@Someone who said this..."Google Talk's desktop client doesn't support this feature (chatting with anonymous users), so you get a link to a special version of the Google Talk gadget."

It's not just the desktop client. It does this in Meebo, too, which is what we use to aggregate about 5 different IM accounts.

Just like many people above, I also get 404 error now. It was working perfectly fine until today evening, and I didn't change any darn thing. I tried some "solutions" by disabling old badges and then creating a new one, but that didn't work either. Time to get the old-styled C-box, unless somebody solves this. It was great as long as it lasted. Thanks!

the chat badge has the same problem in my website, 404 error. I tried to create a new badge, disabled all old badge, tried all the browsers, with the updated flash, clearing cookies but still no luck. Will this be fixed at all?

moreover, if you have a Google Talk enabled device, then you should always be available. The URL for your badge can be found under the edit drill down menu. Simply make your own icon and then attach an anchor to it. a href="URL GOES HERE" image src="images/icon.jpg" /a

img had to be spelled out and I had to take the brackets <> out sorry...

@Anonymous - January 28, 2010 9:25 PM PDT:I may be missing something but can't think of a perfect option

Google Wave can do this, but it's a rather rich interface and is still quite experimental(unstable+not widely available.)A FriendFeed group could be used, but isn't from google.Lively was an embeddable graphical(3d) chat room by google, but ended up shut down.

It's unfortunate that this was discontinued, the workaround that I am using is to sign up for a live chat ( http://www.clickdesk.com/ ) and hook it up with Gtalk. Visitors use the live chat interface, I use the Gtalk interface.

The charter statement of this website (located in the upper right of this page) reads: An unofficial blog that watches Google's attempts to move your operating system online.

Your operating system already IS online! If you disbelieve this, just try to get any functionality out of your browser should you fail to surrender your computer to the regularly scheduled upload of your personal data disguised as so called updates. LOL

How bad will it have to get before all you people wake up, and see what's happening? George Orwell saw it all, and you people just wont wake up!

We need competition from the open source community to stop these Plutocrats and Federalists before there is a freaking camera up everybody's arse!